1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a nail print apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Nail print apparatus is a printing apparatus which performs printing on a nail of a printing finger, wherein the printing finger which is a finger including the nail to which printing is to be performed being placed on a mounting table provided in the apparatus main body.
However, when the printing finger is merely placed on the mounting table, there is a possibility that the printing finger may move due to movements of the hand and arm transmitting to the printing finger because the hand is in an unstable state. When the printing finger moves during printing causing the position of the printing finger to shift, graphics cannot be printed accurately on the nail, thus causing printing error to occur.
Further, when printing is performed in an inkjet method, for example, graphics cannot be printed finely because ink cannot be applied to correct positions when the printing head of the printing device and the nail are too far apart from each other. On the other hand, when the printing head and the nail are too close to each other, there is a possibility that the nail and finger may be smeared or the printing head may break due to the nail and finger contacting the printing head.
Therefore, it is necessary to decide and fix the position of the printing finger to an appropriate position so that the positional relation (distance and so forth) between the finger nail and the print head be in such way to protect both of the finger nail and the printing head and to enable fine printing.
In view of the above, conventionally, there is known a nail print apparatus in which a printing finger is placed at the position for placing a finger which is fixed in the apparatus and the printing finger is fixed with a restraining device such as a holder or the like so that the printing finger will not move, as shown in JP 2000-194838.
However, human fingers have different lengths according to each finger, from thumb to little finger. Further, length of a specific finger can vary among individuals. Therefore, when trying to perform printing to a plurality of fingers in one apparatus or when a plurality of users are to used one apparatus, there is a case where fingers cannot be sufficiently fixed because the size of the restraining device does not match when trying to fix the finger using the same restraining device. In such case, there is a problem that a proper printing cannot be performed due to the finger and nail rising or being shifted during printing and the like.
In a conventional method, a plurality of restraining devices corresponding to finger sizes of a plurality of users need to be prepared when the nail print apparatus is commercially used. Even when the apparatus is privately used, a plurality of restraining devices corresponding to all types of fingers are required. Further, when the nail print apparatus is privately used, even when a restraining device fitted for fingers of a user, family and friends of the user may also wish to use the same apparatus. However, in such case, there may be inconvenience that the same apparatus cannot be used when sizes of fingers do not match with the sizes of fingers of the user.
Moreover, including such variations of restraining devices to the nail print apparatus causes the cost of the apparatus to increase.
Supposedly, even when a restraining device is prepared for each user, there is a problem that selecting an appropriate restraining device which matches fingers of each user can be time consuming and costly.
Further, in the conventional case where a restraining device is used, fingers need to be fixed to a fixation restraining device in advance when performing printing to nail portions. Thus, the preparation before printing is greatly time consuming.
In view of the above problems, an object of the present invention is to provide a nail print apparatus which can prevent shifting and rising of fingers, corresponding to fingers of various lengths, in a simple manner and which can perform a fine printing to nail portions.